Kanthi Dakshin, an assembly constituency in South Bengal, has never been a stronghold of the Left Front (LF) — it has lost every election from this seat since 1987. However, the results of the recent bypolls here have special significance for the Left. The LF candidate, a CPI leader, finished third behind the BJP nominee, while the winner, the Trinamool Congress candidate, bagged over 56 per cent of the votes polled. Last year, the same CPI nominee had finished as the runner-up to the Trinamool candidate, with 34 per cent votes while the BJP finished with just over 8 per cent. This time, the BJP polled nearly 30 per cent votes, pushing the LF share down to 10 per cent. While it indicates the fast rise of the BJP as a major player in Bengal politics, it also reveals that the saffron outfit seems to be growing at the expense of the Left. The decline of the Left that set in following the 2011 Bengal assembly election and the 2014 general election only seems to have gathered pace in recent months.
Ironically, the Left is on unsteady ground even in its strongholds at a time when the opposition to the BJP, at least on the university campus, increasingly speaks in an idiom once associated with it. Lacking in energy and ideas, the Left seems set to let go of yet another opportunity to reinvent itself as a relevant political player.
